Color-Swatch Arm Tattoo Serves as a Clever Maker Multi-Tool

How much meaning can you fit into a few colored boxes? If you're Jimmie Rodgers, a lot. Photo: Jimmie Rodgers

Hacker/maker/educator Jimmie Rodgers has a new tattoo. What do you see? Some pretty boxes? Yes, it’s that — but also so much more. Let us take you on a tour of its symbolic wonders.

First, it’s a reminder of how to read electronic color codes that indicate the values of electronics components (most commonly resistors). Running elbow to wrist, the colors run from zero to nine. Not that Rodgers needs the reminder, but as a traveling educator, he says it will be a great way to help others learn.

Second, it’s a ruler. The design is five inches long, with 10 even divisions that let Rodgers estimate measurements more accurately. “Originally I wanted to have it be in metric, but I didn’t really like the size at 10 cm, so I went with 5 inches instead. I don’t honestly expect it to be even a remotely accurate ruler, but oftentimes I just need something like ‘is this 3.5 or 4 inches?’ answered, and it should be good for that kind of stuff.”

Third, the long and short end of each rectangle are proportioned according to the golden ratio. This is because the golden ratio is cool.

Fourth, the colors serve double duty. Two through seven on the color codes are a standard ROY G. BV rainbow, the same you see on pride flags. “The pride flag part came about as I showed people my next tattoo idea, as it was a frequent question,” says Rodgers, “I had been doing queer geek panels, and I kept saying ‘I guess it represents that too.’ By the time it came around to getting the tattoo, that was an integral part of the meaning.”

The reason Rodgers had time for the meaning to sink in is that, as a frequent traveler, he rarely has time to sit for a full set of inking sessions. So the idea first came two years ago while doing a hackerspace road trip with Mitch Altman. “I was talking to Mat Metts about fun ways to read resistor color codes.” Metts created a delightful double resistor poster. “Anyhow, as he worked on that poster, I made the first version of this tattoo in Inkscape.”

For the final version, however, Rodgers went one better. He designed it (fifth!) in code. “I was trying to explain it to a friend in a coffee shop in Berlin after the 28th Chaos Communications Congress, and decided to just code it up in Processing as an exercise.”

That turned out to be a great idea. With the Processing sketch in hand, Rodgers was able to quickly run through dozens of variations of spacing, box size and line thickness until he could get it just right. “Coding visual stuff is fun, as you have a ton of design work up front, but then lots of rapid iterations after,” he says. “You basically make the tool that does the drawing for you.”

In keeping with the spirit of Processing hacker and maker culture, Rodgers has released the sketch in case someone wants to play with it. “I don’t expect others to follow suit and get the same tattoo or anything like that,” he says. “The source code is fairly simple, but with modification you could make some fun box art I guess.”